Wireless communication between electronic devices requires that devices participating in the communication, for example a base station and a mobile station, are configured to conform to an agreed framework for communication. The agreed framework comprises defined procedures that are used to effect the communication in the framework context, wherein the context may comprise for example air interface resources, or radio resources, such as at least one frequency band. Such frameworks may be known as radio access technologies, or RATs. A RAT may be defined in industry standards that device manufacturers can refer to when designing products such that they are capable of communicating according to the RAT.
When standards are used correctly, interoperability between devices from a plurality of suppliers may be achieved. For example, a cellular telephone produced by a first manufacturer may be capable of communicating with a cellular telephone produced by a second manufacturer, using a base station produced by a third manufacturer and a core network produced by a fourth manufacturer.
Radio access technologies may be designed for specific use cases in mind. For example, cellular telephony RATs may be optimized for ease of roaming, wide-area coverage and battery power efficiency. On the other hand, other RATs such as those designed for wireless hotspots for stationary users may be optimized to produce high peak datarates in the network to mobile direction.
Methods to improve interoperation between RATs may include, for example, selecting non-overlapping frequency ranges for the respective RATs to avoid interference. Alternatively or in addition communications pertaining to each RAT may be sequenced so that only one RAT is active at any given time. For example, a communication device may partition time into consecutive non-overlapping timeslots, and assign the timeslots to different RATs the communication device is configured to communicate in accordance with.
Cognitive radios operate by sharing a spectrum band dynamically. A cognitive radio may be configured to use a defined spectrum resource in a subordinate manner, wherein the cognitive radio will determine whether the spectrum resource is unused before using it to convey information. A cognitive radio may be configured to detect if a privileged node is accessing the same spectrum resource, responsive to which the cognitive radio may be configured to vacate the spectrum resource to avoid collision with the privileged node.